While the Pittsburgh Steelers are in a transition period, with a 6-8 record and a lower-than-usual likelihood of
making the playoffs, Pro Football Hall of Famer and Steelers great Franco Harris recalls a time when the NFL
organization had it much worse.
“From the club’s inception until 1972, my first season with the team, the Steelers were the league’s worst team,”
Harris stated during our Zoom chat, only a week before his death at the age of 72.
Harris, who died on Wednesday, said that the football club, which began as the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1933 and was
later renamed the Steelers in 1945, had only one postseason appearance and scarcely more than a dozen winning
seasons by the end of 1971.
“But I didn’t think about how bad the Steelers had been, and after four years at Penn State I was thinking sunshine,
maybe in Miami or L.A.,” Harris told ESPN. “When I got there, though, I looked around and knew we had a pretty
good team.”
“Pretty good” could be the understatement of the century. After signing Harris and quarterback Terry Bradshaw,
whom the Steelers selected first overall in the 1970 NFL Draft, the Steelers’ fortunes improved.
The Steelers won double-digit games the next two seasons and advanced deep into the playoffs. By the 1974 season,
and after signing rookie wire receiver Lynn Swann—another future Hall of Famer—the Steelers had won their first of
four Super Bowls in six years. Overall, the Pittsburgh Steelers would be firmly established as the NFL’s 1970s
franchise, one of only a few colossal ball teams.
